Welcome to the Testlio Team, Michelle Surya!

Everyone here at Testlio is thrilled to welcome Michelle Surya to our team! Michelle joins us from Appurify (acquired by Google) where she was the Director of Sales. She will be leading our sales in US so that we can help more companies release their apps with confidence.

From the first conversation I had with Michelle I was blown away by her passion and energy for startups, testing industry and life in general. After spending some time with her in Estonia I was even more convinced that I want to work with her.

Here are Michelle’s thoughts:

“I’m so thrilled to share that I’m joining the Testlio team as their Head of Sales. I’ll be leading sales and new business efforts from San Francisco, growing the customer base, scaling the business and kicking some butt. I come from the mobile development world so this is a perfect next move for me to leverage both my experience and my network.

I can tell you though, that what really attracted me to this company is the team. That’s truly what excites me most about this opportunity. They are young, eager, hardworking professionals that love what they do and do it well… really, really well. I believe that Team is number one – if you are lucky enough to find people that you trust and that value you, its nothing to ignore, in fact it should be celebrated. And I’m definitely going to celebrate this!

Most recently I was leading sales activities for Appurify, a San Francisco based startup backed by Google Ventures. On June 24, during the Keynote at Google I/O 2014, they announced the acquisition of Appurify’s mobile testing platform. I feel extremely fortunate to have been a part of it. Prior to Appurify, I was running enterprise accounts in North American and European territories at Crittercism, also based in San Francisco. Their investors include Google Ventures, Kleiner Perkins, Shasta Ventures, VMWare, and a number of others.

I grew up in the Bay Area and have always been surrounded by the largest and most innovative technology companies but, it wasn’t until I was in college that I became more and more aware of how impactful the startup community is. I stumbled into my first job while I was still in school, consulting for early stage tech companies as mobile was just evolving into what it is today. I learned so much about how to craft and shape a message, how to articulate a company’s core competency in the most effective way, and how a team should focus their energy to reach maximum success. I never missed an opportunity to talk to a founder about their idea and the lengthy stories that led them to it. This was addicting to me, and I’ve been hooked ever since.

Sitting down with startup founders to hear their story is exactly how the Testlio relationship came about. I asked Kristel and Marko to tell me from the beginning, before the beginning, how they came up with the idea to build Testlio. It is a very good story, a story that resonates and that makes sense. It is so compelling that I want to tell it to others. That’s when I knew, that the Testlio story was something I wanted to be a part of.”